Modern network-based systems may describe one or more entities by maintaining a profile for each entity. A profile of the entity typically includes one or more descriptors that describe the entity or its attributes (e.g., characteristics). For example, an entity may be a person (e.g., a person that has registered as a user of a network-based system), and the profile of the person may include descriptors the person's age (e.g., 25 years old), location (e.g., Los Angeles, Calif.), gender (e.g., male), occupation (e.g., engineer), employer (e.g., LinkedIn Corp.), or any suitable combination thereof.
In some network-based systems, an entity may be associated (e.g., correlated, related, affiliated, or otherwise connected) with one or more users of a network-based system or database. For example, a network-based system may include a database of entity-user associations that stores records of correspondence relationships (e.g., correspondences) between an entity and one or more users. A user of a network-based system may itself be an entity with a profile and may be associated with other entities and other users. Network-based systems that provide social networking services to their users typically maintain sophisticated databases of entity-user associations.